The Bar of Habits, by Franz Bartelt
Jacques Griffault, who runs the Le Scribe bookstore in Montauban, likes to talk about books. He regularly publishes his favorites on his site, Lescribe.com. He selected for us this collection of short stories by Franz Bartelt:
"I have good news for you! Franz Bartelt in his last work, a collection of sixteen new ones alternately tender, cruel, nar- quous, wacky, always surprising.
Happy those of you who are going to discover this talented author through this bar of habits. In the first story that gives its title to the collection, a man, Balmont comes, for fifteen years, every morning, sit in the same place to take his coffee and read his newspaper at the Café des Marronniers, an institution only attended by regulars. One morning, he is surprised to see his place occupied by a stranger. In another news, a waitress thinks she is finally finding great love in a man who has just dismissed her. There is a traveler on a train that does not stop ...
The sixth text, entitled Soft History, tells the life of Guy Vouivre, "a soft man by birth, who married a good dough, a girl who ate too much and who always agreed". I leave you with the pleasure of the discovery of what will happen to this union of soft, but can not resist that to deliver you the first lines of this news:
"There are very few soft stories, and writers prefer anything that is stiff, voluntary, enterprising, war, erection, dry heart, passionate energy, and literary subjects of the highest order. softly are despised, rightly, because they are not interesting.The slack does not allow frank attacks or incisive remarks.It does not bounce.It does not go ahead.It sometimes looks at his passed, but with softness, and sees only slack, the soft is never fit. "
Franz Bartelt, novelist, poet, novelist is the author, among others, of chronicles (Rather Sunday and nowhere, but in Ireland), as well as two very tasty works: Terrine Rimbaud and The garden of the hunchback, a crazy polar appeared in black sequence. All readings that I highly recommend.
Warning: discovering this talented and talented author you take the risk of wanting to read more of his works ... which presents no danger: these books are to be enjoyed without moderation.
The bar of habits, Franz Bartelt (Gallimard, 260 pp. 17,50?).
Jacques Griffault holds the Le Scribe bookstore, 115, Faubourg Lacapelle, 82000 Montauban
